Of Portals, Steampunk and Guyliner
by Beckslee
Summary: When Emma finds out her friend Jefferson used to be in a band with Rumplestiltskin and Victor Frankenstein, she won't shut up about it until Jefferson offers her the chance to go back in time to see one of their concerts. Believe or Leave AU fic. Will contain mad swan in future chapters.
1. My friend's a rock star?

For back story on the Believe or Leave phenomenom check out tumblr. Its David Anders' fault, he started this on twitter. We just picked up the ball he threw and ran off with it laughing madly. I've also written another BoL-themed fic _The past always comes back to bite you_ not related to this one but its there.

For the purposes of this story, either Jefferson's hat wasn't crushed or they got the hat Emma made to work. Doesn't matter, they have a working hat. Also, at the moment Emma and Jefferson are just friends. Likelihood of that changing before the end of the story - high.

We all know that the characters aren't mine, I'm just playing with them. I promise I'll put them back in the box when I'm done.

* * *

"I don't know why you're so fascinated by this. Surely you've known people who were in bands before?" It was the third time in as many weeks that Emma had driven their conversation towards his past musical exploits. For Jefferson, Believe or Leave was something long dead, he didn't hide it, nor did he revel in it. Despite the smallness of the town, neither he, Rumplestiltskin or Frankenstein sought each other out to relive past glories.

Emma placed her mug in front of her. "Sure there has been a friend or two, but they were small time things. Granny tells me you guys were really popular. Plus, I have a hard time imagining Gold in any kind of band, let alone being the lead guitarist."

An offhand comment from Granny Lucas after one of Emma and Jefferson's lunches had piqued Emma's curiosity. She had assumed that her friend had some sort of musical talent given the number of instruments scattered through his house, but the revelation of what had apparently been some sort of famous boy-band had been too much, especially when she discovered that the town letch and the master deal-maker had also been involved. The hatter's (or keyboardist/guitarist/vocalist as she had found out) reticence to go into detail had only increased her curiosity.

"We're not going to be reforming any time soon, so you may as well let it go, we've been through this, there is nothing further to tell. Rumple, Victor and I had a band, we had some success, then Victor had to return to his own land and I got married so Believe or Leave faded away. We moved on and so should you." Jefferson folded his arms in a huff.

"Oh come on Jefferson, of course you've moved on, its been nearly 50 years for you! I found out that my friend was a pop star only 3 weeks ago! This is the kind of thing that people share when they are getting to know each other. You telling me about it is the only way I can learn, as you've said there's little chance of you guys reforming, and I doubt The Enchanted Forest had any recording facilities for me to listen to a CD or anything." Emma didn't understand him sometimes, most people would lead with tales of being in a band, but she had to drag the smallest bit of information out of him, and Granny was really the only other person who she could ask. Her parents and most of their friends were too young to have seen the band at the height of their success.

He sighed, "you're right, between a lack of the modern conveniences and the curse transporting us to a difference world I doubt there is much left of the band, excepting the members of course. But there really isn't much more to tell you Emma and I'm not really interested in it anymore." He slid out of the booth and went to pay for their lunch. When he turned back, Emma was holding the door open for him. They walked together back to the sheriff's office, but before Emma could say goodbye Jefferson grabbed her arm, "we're ok aren't we?" Emma smiled at him, "if we've become friends after the way we met, its going to take more than you not being chatty about a band to break that."

Smiling back at her, Jefferson leaned down and pressed a kiss to her cheek, "I'm glad, it would be a silly thing to fight about. Don't work too hard. I know this town can get unruly." Emma waved at him over her shoulder as she went back into her office. Jefferson watched until she had gone out of view before heading home.

* * *

Emma was about to go to bed when she was surprised by a knock at her door. Standing in her hallway was Jefferson. He shook his head at her invitation in. Rubbing the back of his neck he looked at her nervously, "there may be a way." Emma looked at him, not hiding her confusion. "A way to what Jefferson?" "A way for you to see Believe or Leave... if you really want to that is. My hat... it travels to different worlds, but sometimes I can also open a door to a different time"

Leaning against the doorframe Emma considered his proposal. "Are you sure Jefferson? Don't think you have to do this, I meant what I said, I'm not angry with you. I've just been curious that's all." He stared at his feet, "just think on it." Without looking at her he started off towards the stairs, "Jefferson, wait!" Emma followed him down the hallway and stood in front of him, "I'd like that, if you're sure its ok. I don't want to break any rules."

He smiled down at her, dropping some of the nervousness that he had for the past few minutes. "As long as we're careful it should be fine" his grin widened as he joked, "and if it will get you off my back about this it will be worth it." Emma rolled her eyes at her friend before throwing her arms around his neck, Jefferson's arms wound around her waist. She squeezed him briefly and whispered, "thank you" before pulling back and continuing, "do I have to prepare for this, how long will it take?"

Abruptly dropping his arms from her sides, Jefferson stepped away from Emma, on guard once more. "To be on the safe side, make sure you have at least 12 hours free, we shouldn't be gone that long, but things can go wrong. Let me know when you want to go. I have to go, I left Grace asleep." Deftly stepping around her, Jefferson made his way down the stairs and into the night.

* * *

Emma had barely finished knocking when Jefferson opened the door. As he ushered her inside she questioned him, "will you explain why I had to wear something red?" Jefferson took her coat before answering. "It was a fan thing, they wore specific colours to indicate which member was their favourite. Red was for me, you're getting into this show with a pass from me, so it makes sense that you'd be wearing red."

"So what were the other colours?" He turned back to her. "Rumple was gold or yellow unsurprisingly, Victor had green, and before you ask, it was usually a pretty even balance. None of us had a significantly bigger following than the others." Emma nodded as she looked him over.

"You're wearing all black, are you not showing any preference?" Jefferson cleared his throat nervously, he wasn't sure how Emma was going to react to this part. "I'm not going with you - I can't." Emma stared at him, "what do you mean you're not coming with me? I can't go on my own, I need you to help direct me there." Jefferson directed her towards the kitchen where the kettle was boiling. He avoided answering her questions, instead busying himself with tea-making. Emma was forced to wait until Jefferson was ready to talk.

At length, each of them holding a steaming cup, he explained himself. "It's a bad idea for me to go with you, time travel is tricky enough, you have to maintain a low profile, try not to draw too much attention to yourself, not change anything significant. Add to that, you _really_ shouldn't interact with yourself, there is way too much potential here for me to meet myself. I'm sorry Emma, I'll take you there, and explain what you have to do, but you'll be on your own for most of the time."

Emma watched him silently as he explained. For the past week something had been bothering her friend - something about this journey, maybe this explained it. It usually took a lot to shake him, but he'd been acting like a skittish animal since the invitation for the trip, maybe he knew he couldn't go and didn't want to tell her. He looked directly into her eyes for the last part of his explanation and blushed.

Draining her cup of tea, Emma stood, "shall we get started? Are there any other rules I need to know?" Jefferson quickly finished his tea and took both cups to the sink. "Not really, obviously don't try to warn anyone about The Curse or other future events and try to stay out of trouble." He removed a piece of paper from his jacket pocket. "Take this with you and don't lose it. Its a pass that should get you anywhere you want to go within the concert grounds."

Folding the paper again, Emma tucked it into a pocket and straightened her jacket. A nervous smile at Jefferson indicated she was ready. He took her hand and led her back to the hallway where The Hat was waiting on a side table. He picked it up and with a practiced flick of the wrist set the hat to spinning in the middle of the room. As the hat picked up speed and purple smoke started to flow out of it, Jefferson felt Emma's grip on his hand tighten, he squeezed back and stepped closer to the opening portal. Over the winds he shouted "ready?" Eyes fixed on the gaping vortex in front of her Emma simply nodded. They jumped.

* * *

"What is this place? I definitely didn't come here last time." Emma stared in amazement at the massive circular room. Doors of every type and colour surrounded her. Jefferson stood back and let her explore. "It doesn't really have a name, I tend to call it the hallway of doors, its not actually a place, its sort of the space between places if that makes sense. And last time you went portal jumping you didn't have an experienced jumper with you so you bypassed this place altogether." Emma turned to face him and he explained. "Most magics can create a portal to another place but it takes training to control them like I do. Its how I can access these rooms and also bend time."

He walked across to a brown wooden door with gold inlays. "This one leads you to The Enchanted Forest." Emma followed him, "It looks like the cover of Henry's book! I swear the gold design is the same!" Jefferson grinned, "The Curse left reminders of our home everywhere in Storybrooke, people owned things that were instinctively important to them, but they had no idea why. Of course Henry's book would be significant." Emma's fingers traced the pattern around the door reverently, stepping back when Jefferson cleared his throat.

"The portal should open at the back of the local tavern, it will be a door that looks like this one. Don't worry about other people coming through, you can't see the door unless you know its there" He paused as he tried to think of anything else that he needed to tell Emma, "and I think that's about it." With eyes still fixed on the door, he was surprised by a hug. Emma moved into his line of vision, "I know I've said this before, and I'll probably say it again when I get back, but thank you Jefferson, its not just the band thing. This is an opportunity for me to see what The Enchanted Forest was really like, there wasn't much left when I was there last time."

He reached out and squeezed her shoulder. "Let's get you started, we haven't got forever." Turning Emma so she was facing the door again, he rested his chin on her shoulder and grasped the door handle. Concentrating briefly, he opened the door and murmured into her hair "One Believe or Leave concert, have fun."

TBC.

In the next chapter – Emma sees her first Believe or Leave concert and is amazed by all the leather and guyliner on display. For the first time she kind of understands why Belle insists that Rumplestiltskin is sexy and what will happen when she manages to get backstage after the concert?


	2. Pants that tight can't be comfortable

First things first. A big thank you to everyone who has reviewed, followed, favourited, or even read and enjoyed this. I know I haven't responded to most of you personally, but I also knew this chapter was going to be up fairly quickly. Expect a bit more of a wait for the 3rd chapter as that's the one I've barely started writing yet.

When thinking about the kind of stage antics BoL get up to, I have envisaged a sort of cross between Queen and Muse, so keep that in mind. I didn't want to go into precise detail about the entire gig, because that would have been tedious. Thanks to Amanda for coming up with the idea that BoL were like a steampunk/FTL version of Muse. I have been listening to the band continuously as I wrote which really helped me visualise the concert. Their outfits are roughly what they were in The Doctor.

Which leads me to this. Happy birthday Amanda, I've been sitting on this chapter for a few days so I could post it today for you. xx

* * *

At least travelling with a portal jumper gave a much smoother ride than the first times she had attempted it. If the doorway wasn't a shimmering surface behind her, Emma would have assumed that she had just passed through an ordinary door.

Around her was the dank atmosphere of an alleyway. Once the door was shut, the portal just looked like a doorway into the building it was set into, Emma hoped Jefferson was right about no one else being able to see it. Looking around, she tried to find a way towards the front of the building, hopefully once she was on a street she would be able to find her way to the concert.

Stumbling onto the street, Emma looked around to get her bearings. Shadows were deep, the street being lit only by light spilling from windows. The darkness didn't mean the street was empty however. She watched small groups of people (mainly female) hurrying all in the same direction, as they walked into the lights Emma noticed scarves and shirts in varying shades of red, gold and green. Either things were a bit Christmasy around here, or these people were headed to the Believe or Leave concert.

Choosing to believe the latter, Emma fell in with the crowd. Another red-clad woman glanced at Emma and smiled when she saw Emma's shirt. It wasn't long before they reached what Emma assumed to be the concert grounds. The setup was similar to small town fairs and music festivals that Emma had seen. Directly in front of her was a collection of small tents selling their wares, food and drink stalls and behind those she could just make out a significantly larger tent she supposed to be the stage.

Before she reached those however, she had to fight through the large crowd milling around, waiting to get into the gates. Waiting in the queue, Emma listened to the conversations around her. Debates between friends over the merits of each of the band members had Emma giggling to herself - still unable to picture either Gold or Whale as rock stars. When the discussion switched to who was the bigger fan, Emma found herself drawn into the debate when they started canvassing others in the queue on how many times they had seen Believe or Leave, all around Emma were astounded when she admitted that this was her first time.

Working her way to the front of the queue, Emma searched through her pockets for the slip of paper Jefferson had given her. Presenting it to the guard at the gate, she waited while he read the message. Reaching the end the guard looked up and leered at her, "Don't see too many of these, what did you do to _earn_ this?" Taken aback, Emma snatched the ticket out of the guard's grip, "I know someone connected with the band - that's all" she said as haughtily as possible. The guard laughed as he waved her through, "Oh, I bet you do"

One of the girls she had been talking to in the line ran to catch up with Emma. "What was that about?" Emma shook her head, "he turned sleazy when he saw my pass." she showed the girl the paper, pulling it back slightly when the girl gasped. "This is - I have always dreamed about having one of those and this one is from Jefferson!" Emma shrugged in confusion, so the girl continued, "that pass gets you anywhere, backstage into the green room, anywhere! I've met a couple of girls who have managed to get one, but they've always been from Frankenstein, and a couple from Rumplestiltskin that have been given out in return for deals done. I've never seen a Jefferson pass" Emma eyed the paper before folding it and putting it away more carefully than she had the first time. She could go anywhere? How safe would that be? The last thing she needed was Gold realising that there was something strange about her, that would be very bad indeed.

Scoping around for a good spot to watch the show from, Emma set her self up not too far from the stage, she was able to see everything, but hopefully wouldn't be crushed by a lot of people, her mosh pit (or whatever the FTL equivalent was) days were long behind her. Snippets of chatter floated around the grounds as she studied the stage. Emma had always gathered that technology in The Enchanted Kingdom was sort of medieval and so far both her experiences here backed up that assumption. How a rock band were going to work under those conditions was a little puzzling. The stage itself gave away no clues, from what she could see it was almost completely empty, a few guitars on one side. Around the stage itself there was no movement, no lights. The grounds seemed almost full now, looking at her watch, Emma realised she had been in her spot for about half an hour, if there wasn't a support act, she guessed the band would be starting soon.

Tendrils of purple smoke began to flit around the audience - as people started to notice, the cheers and clapping began. Initially cautious at the evidence of magic Emma guessed that this was a signal that the band was about to arrive, given the increase of excitement. She also realised that this was going to be how the concert was run, this world lacked electricity, but it did have magic and very few people knew how to wield magic as well as The Dark One.

A lone guitar could be heard over the screaming fans, Emma strained to see anything on the stage, but it was still dark, the riff gradually got louder, and as it reached a peak, the melody crashed into an opening chord. On the beat, Mr Gold - Rumplestiltskin (Emma couldn't call him anything else when he looked like _that_) appeared center stage in a cloud of purple and gold smoke, a single, magical light glinting off his strange metallic skin.

Gradually drum and organ sounds joined the guitar, at the end of a bar, a purple dervish wound its way from the left of the stage only to dissipate leaving Jefferson standing behind an organ. The melody repeated itself twice before there was a flash of lightening and where it struck the stage - slightly right of center - appeared a set of drums, Victor Frankenstein sitting behind them, cymbals still ringing. Without hesitation he continued drumming. The audience reaction at each of the members was predictable. Some things never changed no matter what world you were in. Emma's ears were already ringing, partly from the lightening crash and partly from the screams of the fans surrounding her. She had to admit, Believe or Leave certainly had the showmanship down to a fine art. Halfway through the first song and she was already impressed.

Rumplestilktskin was a surprisingly active and flamboyant frontman for the band. He was considerably less dramatic as Mr Gold, but the stage moves he made felt like over-exaggerated versions of the ones she was used to. Each crafted to get a response from his audience and he always got it. Emma had never seen Mr Gold as a sex symbol and had wondered why Belle was so adamant that her boyfriend should be classed as "a hottie." For the first time, Emma realised that Belle wasn't alone in that feeling. Hundreds of girls were salivating over the contents of Rumplestiltskin's skin-tight leather pants and Emma could kind of see the appeal. He had the talent to back up the self-confidence that he exuded and in a performer that was a powerful and sexy thing. Shaking her head to clear it of the disturbing thought of a sexy My Gold, Emma turned her attention to the other band members.

For the first time Emma regretted standing so far back from the stage. While she could see perfectly well, she wasn't close enough to really see what a young Frankenstein and a young Jefferson looked like. She knew Jefferson was about 19 at this time, and assumed that Victor would be a couple of years older than that. From the outfit she could see, Victor certainly looked like a steampunk mad scientist, leather coat buttoned all the way up, John Lennon style tinted glasses and... Emma giggled to herself, was his hair curled? The drum kit obstructed any further view she had of him, so she looked at the final member.

A guitar slung across his back, Jefferson was still playing the organ. Emma was used to his extravagant dress sense. She had never realised how closely it mirrored his wardrobe in the magical realm. His penchant for scarves and waistcoats had not begun in her world. If anything the clothes she was used to were sedate in comparison. Like the others he didn't shy away from wearing leather at a tightness that _surely_ had to be causing some discomfort. Flashes of colour from his scarf were only emphasised by the blackness of the rest of his outfit, including the overlarge hat perched on his head.

As one song came to an end, Jefferson stepped away from the organ and swung his guitar to the front, gripping it and strumming a test chord. At the same time, Victor picked up a bass guitar and moved to stand slightly in front of the drums. Without seeming to concentrate on it, they started the new song as one. From these new positions, Emma could see that Jefferson's full length coat was sleeveless to free up his arms for some of the fast and complex guitarwork that he was focused on. This time, Rumple took the rhythm guitar part, combining it with vocals. Victor pacing behind each step in time with the beat, not looking at the audience, focusing on his guitar.

Believe or Leave reminded Emma of someone, some band she had heard, but she couldn't place who. These guys were outrageous. Rumple prancing around the stage singing, creating smoke stairs so Jefferson could be standing above the audience whilst doing a guitar solo, Victor getting down on his knees at the front of the stage while singing a love-soaked power ballad, somehow managing to sing to 5 different audience members at once. Each crafted moment of extravagant stage antics was well polished now, but Emma would bet that they had originated from a spur-of the moment act on some previous occasion that had been so popular with the fans that the band kept it as a gimmick.

Emma wasn't sure if it was just a stage persona, but Jefferson seemed disinterested, almost bored with the whole show, He rarely looked at the audience and had a brooding air. It did mean that when he deigned to make eye contact with a particular member or section of the audience they went crazy, so maybe it was just a game, playing hard-to-get. If he wasn't showing his emotions physically, they were certainly coming out through his music, there were angry guitar solos, delicate and fragile piano melodies and some broken and mournful chords coming out of the organ.

Looking at her watch again, Emma noted it had been nearly 2 hours. Somehow despite the time, energy levels hadn't dropped, either on stage or in the audience, band and fans were still going strong, Emma wasn't sure how, she was exhausted from the small amount of dancing that she had done in between trying to see everything and taking a few discreet pictures with the camera in her phone.

Finally she heard Rumple announce this would be the last song. Her adventure was about to come to an end. Emma's hand drifted towards the pocket where her pass was kept, the night didn't _have_ to be over yet.

**TBC**

In the next chapter - Emma gets herself backstage, keeps her distance from Rumplestiltskin, tries to avoid the advances of one Dr Frankenstein and makes a better first impression on Jefferson than he made on her.


End file.
